Web annotation of taxon-level data - Results of Training Hackathon for Checklist Cross-mapping and Precursor National Checklists Generation from GBIF-mediated data¶

Andrea Kohlbecker (leader), Ruud Altenburg, Oskar Kindvall, David Remsen

Sources of biodiversity occurrence data, such as catalogued and indexed by GBIF, may serve as a means to both verify or extend the list of taxa found in national species checklists. They might also serve as the means to start a de-novo national species list. Team 2 focused on a system design that could be used to present assertions of a taxon occurrence within a country - to a presumed expert curator, who might then use their knowledge to assess the assertion and determine whether the taxon should or should not be added to the list. The authoritative Catalogue of Life record - linked through the cross-mapping efforts of Team 1, would then form the record-of-authority for the national list. In addition, negative matches (i.e, species asserted to occur within the country but determined to not belong there - might be linked to a comment or annotation that could serve to inform future users of the GBIF network to the nature of the suspect occurrence. This led to the articulation of the following user story.

User Story 2-1¶

As an owner of a national checklist I want to load my checklist into a system and compare it to the list of taxa assigned to my country within the GBIF index. Matches missing from my national list may 1) represent legitimate missing taxa that should be candidates to add to my list. They may also 2) represent taxa erroneously applied to my country that should be annotated with their suspect status for future users of the record.

##Goals

1. Can the federated GBIF portal be used to support the identification and qualification of novel species occurrence records in the development of national or regional species inventories?
2. Can annotation interfaces be used, in combination with authoritative regional or national species lists, to identify and annotate potentially erroneous species occurrences and thus inform future users of GBIF-mobilized data as to this erroneous assessment?

##System Design

Team 2 came up with the following solutions for each step in the workflow described in Figure 2 below.